The FWC has refused a bid for a three-month suspension of industrial action at a major aluminium smelter, finding that it would hinder bargaining, and that the AWU had already made significant concessions to ensure that the plant would remain operational.
The FWC has ordered lift manufacturer Schindler to end an unlawful lockout of more than 200 workers, holding that alerting union delegates to impending "employer response action" did not satisfy a requirement to notify bargaining representatives.
The FWC has ordered a health and safety representative to stop organising unprotected strikes for workers maintaining Sydney's trains, after finding no evidence that they faced immediate dangers from an increase in night shifts.
A 48-hour midwives strike would have endangered the lives of mothers and babies, the FWC has ruled, in newly-published reasons explaining why it suspended the stoppage.
The FWC has refused to order the UWU to stop picketing that has allegedly blocked access to a major baking supplier's manufacturing facility, finding that it had not impeded bargaining and that the employer produced no evidence of its economic impact.
The NSW IRC has affirmed its ability to dictate the terms of a corrective Facebook post it forced the HSU to publish and has dismissed a claim that in heading off paramedics' industrial action, a senior tribunal member approached it on the basis that State IR laws don't "tolerate" it during conciliation.
In a novel move, unions are seeking to bring forward by 14 weeks the end of the strike-suspending s425 order won by NSW rail employers, arguing that it has failed to achieve its stated purpose of bridging the differences between parties, who they claim have moved further apart during FWC-supervised talks.
The UWU has defeated a federal government attempt to end strikes by Serco employees running immigration detention centres, after the FWC found it not unusual for detainees to climb on roofs, set off fire alarms or endure brief lockdowns, as occurred during the industrial action.
The ETU has lodged an urgent Federal Court bid to challenge FWC orders that suspended industrial action across Sydney's trains network until July, arguing a full bench wrongly treated rail unions as an "undifferentiated whole" and unreasonably advantaged the employers.
A FWC full bench says it suspended industrial action afflicting Sydney's rail network partly to give the RTBU's leadership a chance to "re-establish a greater degree of control" amid suggestions some workers have been going rogue in pushing for a more radical approach.
